ISRS Conferences

“We must meet; we must communicate with one another; we must, it would seem, be alone together” (John Macmurray)

We welcome contributions to the third international pandisciplinary conference on solitude in community: Alone Together. It will take place between 31st March and 2nd April 2022 in the University of Szczecin, Poland, under the auspices of The Reverend Canon Professor Peter Neil, Vice-Chancellor of Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln (UK) and the auspices of Professor Waldemar Tarczyński, Rector of the University of Szczecin (Poland).

This is organized by the International Society for Research on Solitude (ISRS) with support from Bishop Grosseteste University (UK) and the Institute of Pedagogy of the University of Szczecin (Poland).

We welcome papers* and posters on any issues related to solitude, silence and loneliness, from any discipline, and from researchers from all over the world. All papers and discussions will be held in English.

This time, for the first time, we plan a session on “Alone Together in everyday life” conducted by practitioners only, who directly serve people to soothe the loneliness or promote solitude in various ways and social environments.

*Scheduled speaking time up to 20 minutes. In the case of online participation, poster posters should be sent in pdf, jpg or png format to write.isrs@gmail.com

The submission of abstracts will be welcome till the 28.02.2022.  (Later submissions will be considered if there is still room on the programme.) To submit, please fill in the form here: click on the link

The conference will be hybrid, so participation will be possible on-site in Poland, and also online. Participation on-site will require a fee 100 USD/ 87 EUR / 75 GBP / 400 PLN for refreshments and conference materials (no accommodation included).

• ING BANK ŚLĄSKI S.A.
• 46 1050 1559 1000 0022 8790 4474
• Nr BIC (SWIFT) INGBPLPW
• IBAN: PL 46 1050 1559 1000 0022 8790 4474
• (as a title please provide nr: 0061)

If you consider publishing the research you’ll present, we have a few possibilities to indicate. Our friend Dat Bao from Monash University in Australia wishes to make a special edition of his brand new Journal of Silence Studies in Education. Philosophically oriented articles are invited to contribute (in English or in Polish) to the Polish journal Ruch Filozoficzny (70 points in Poland) by our friend Piotr Domeracki. We have also proposed a monograph series (which could also include edited books) to the publishers Bloomsbury, and that proposal is currently being reviewed.  

We are looking forward to meeting you!

• Prof. Eva Alerby, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
• Dr. Dat Bao, Monash University, Australia
• Prof. Sandra Bosacki, Brock University, Canada
• Prof. Michael Buchanan, Australian Catholic University, Australia
• Prof. Elżbieta Dubas, University of Lodz, Poland
• Prof. Amanda Fulford, Edge Hill University, UK
• Prof. Jarosław Horowski, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
• Dr. Helen E. Lees, independent scholar, Italy
• Prof. Malka Margalit, Peres Academic Center, Israel
• Prof. Ben Mijuskovic, California State University, USA
• Prof. Anna Murawska, University of Szczecin, Poland
• Prof. Michael O’Sullivan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
• Dr. Christophe Perrin, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
• Dr. Wong Ping Ho, The Education University of Hong Kong, China 
• Dr. Anne Pirrie, University of the West of Scotland, UK
• Dr. Bambang Pratolo, Universitas Ahmad Dahlan: Yogyakarta, Indonesia
• Dr. Eyal Rosenstreich,  Peres Academic Center, Israel
• Dr. Olivia Sagan, Queen Margaret University, UK
• Prof. Axel Seemann, Bentley University, USA
• Dr. Henrieta Serban, Institute of Philosophy and Psychology “Constantin Rădulescu-Motru” and Institute of Political Science and International Relations “Ion I. C. Brătianu” of the Romanian Academy, Romania
• Dr Christopher A Sink, Western Washington University Department of Psychology, USA
• Prof. Julian Stern, Bishop Grosseteste University, UK
• Prof. Katarzyna Wrońska, The Jagiellonian University, Poland

Link to the meeting (click here)

Day 1: Thursday 31^st March 2022

9:00 – 9:30 (Polish time) Welcome

Julian Stern (Bishop Grosseteste University, UK)

Patrons:

The Reverend Canon Professor Peter Neil, Vice-Chancellor of Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln (UK)

Professor Waldemar Tarczyński, Rector of the University of Szczecin (Poland)

Anna Murawska, head of the Institute of Pedagogy, University of Szczecin (Poland)

9:30 – 10:15 Dat Bao (Monash University, Australia) – The multiple meanings of silence in contexts: Implications for learning and communication

10:15 – 10:30 Discussion

10:30 – 12:00 Session 1 – Theories of Solitude

Moderator: Katarzyna Ciarcińska (University of Szczecin, Poland)

1. Piotr Domeracki (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland) – The idea of solitude in existential philosophy. An overview of the issue
2. Olivia Sagan (Queen Margaret University Edinburgh, UK) – The Problem with the Problem of Loneliness
3. Henrieta Anisoara Serban (Institute of Philosophy and Psychology ”Constantin Rădulescu-Motru” and Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations „Ion I.C. Brătianu” of the Romanian Academy, Romania) – Solitude as subjective horizon
4. Torgeir Fjeld (Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts, Norway/Poland) – A silent trace: Introducing Wolfgang Schirmacher’s philosophy of the future
5. Jaromir Brejdak (University of Szczecin, Poland) – The social ontology or the ontology of a lonely individual? The crucial role of empathy – a philosophical approach
6. Discussion

12:15 – 13:45 Session 2 – Alone and Together: Solitude and Loneliness in Education

Moderator: Anna Murawska (University of Szczecin, Poland)

1. Helen Lees (independent scholar, UK/Italy) – The broken unscientific arm of s/Self (care) in the context of silence and solitude for schools
2. Eric Schoenmakers (Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands) – What students need to not feel lonely
3. Elżbieta Dubas (University of Łódź, Poland) – Learning in/of solitude in the context of pedagogical monoseology
4. Amy Webster (Bishop Grosseteste University, UK) – Children Reading Alone and Reading Together: Literary representations and lessons from a pandemic
5. Julia Magdalena Karapuda (University of Szczecin, Poland) – Teachers’ loneliness in the process of assessing students’ behaviour
6. Discussion

14:00 – 14:45 Samir Dayal (Bentley University, USA) – Antigone at the Crossroads: The Ethics of Alienation

14:45 – 15:00 Discussion

15:00 – 15:15 Summary

Link to the meeting (click here)

Day 2: Friday 1^st April 2022

9:00 – 10:30 Session 3 – Solitude in Culture and Religion

Moderator: Małgorzata Wałejko (University of Szczecin, Poland)

1. Julian Stern (Bishop Grosseteste University, UK) – The Art, Literature and Music of Solitude from Modernism to Postmodernism
2. Marino A. Balducci (University of Szczecin, Poland) – Collective Individuality: Dante’s Moral Philosophical and Psychological Message in Paradise XXXI
3. Mariusz Strzeżek (Doctoral School of Szczecin University, Poland) – Solitude and Mourning in the Late Poetry of Maria Kurecka
4. Narayan Prasad Chaudhari (Tribal Religion and Their Philosophy of life in Indian School Students, India) – Tribal Religion and Their Philosophy of life in Indian School Students
5. Gillian Simpson (Bishop Grosseteste University, UK) – Poem: Letter to a Dictator (from the Silenced Innocents)
6. Aleksander Cywiński, Kalina Kukiełko, Krzysztof Tomanek (University of Szczecin, Poland) – Between solitude and a sense of community. The project My Space by Rita Leistner
7. Discussion

10:45 – 12:15 Session 4 – Solitude & Loneliness: Educational perspectives

Moderator: Amy Webster (Bishop Grosseteste University, UK)

1. Marisa Musaio (Catholic University of Sacred Heart of Milan, Italy) – From different negative loneliness to positive loneliness as a metaphor for interiority: a pedagogical proposal
2. Katarzyna Wrońska (Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland) – Solitude and meeting in education: a balancing exercise in being with oneself and being with others
3. Jarosław Horowski (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland) – Education for Marriage as Education for Loneliness
4. Eva Alerby (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden) – To be, or not to be, alone – when the other is a pine tree
5. Barbara Żakowska (University of Szczecin, Poland) – The international education programs as a medium for bringing together alone cultures
6. Discussion

12:30 – 14:00 Session 5 – Loneliness in different professional environments

Moderator:   Barbara Żakowska  (University of Szczecin, Poland)

1. Noy Sasson and Malka Margalit (Peres Academic Center, Israel) – Predictors of loneliness during job relocation: Personal and interpersonal perspectives
2. Olga Szynkaruk (University of Szczecin, Poland) – Alone in Life, Together in Death? Reflections on the Triple Burial of Dolní Věstonice
3. Liad Bareket Bojmel and Lily Chernyak-Hai (Peres Academic Center, Israel) – Work Engagement during Remote Work, the Role of Loneliness and Hope
4. Piotr Krakowiak (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland) – Loneliness in “the silent pandemic of grief” after loss. What can we do during and after pandemic?
5. Marie Stern (Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Hull, UK) – The Lonely Patient
6. Discussion

14:15 – 15:15 Session 6 – Posters session

Moderator: Aleksander Cywiński (University of Szczecin, Poland)

1. Sandra Bosacki (Brock University, Canada) – Why youth want to be alone – Initial data from longitudinal study of Canadian youth’s preferences for solitude
2. Michal Einav and Malka Margalit (Peres Academic Center, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yaffa Academic College, Israel) – Loneliness and Self-Efficacy in Higher Education:   The Mediating Role of Social Support and Hope
3. Michał Mrozek (University of Szczecin, Poland) – The Economic Dimension of the Solitude in Consideration of COVID-19 Pandemic – Sociability, Alone Living and Economic Growth
4. Roni Laslo-Roth, Sivan George-Levi and Lital Ben Yacov (Peres Academic Center, Israel) – Support me in the good times too: Interpersonal emotion regulation, social support, and loneliness among mothers of children with ASD
5. Christine Spiteri (University of Malta) – Loneliness in the Digital Age
6. Discussion

15:15 – 16:00   Conference Conclusion for all participants including members of the Scientific Committee

We are delighted to present excellent Keynote Speakers:

Dat Bao, Monash University, Australia

will present on:

The multiple meanings of silence in contexts: Implications for learning and communication

Abstract:

This discussion, which is drawn from research in the educational setting of Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, looks at a wide range of meanings unstated in words but infused through silence. Such messages, however, do not come from silence alone but are triggered by the performance of speech and other ecological factors. Empirical findings reveal that silence frequently performs the same social and educational functions as speech. The only difference is that many can clearly hear the latter but easily fail to recognise that the former even exists.

Dat Bao is a senior lecturer at Monash University, Australia. He has researched silence in education across diverse contexts and has written about silence as thought processes and ways of learning. He has produced a PhD thesis, two books and twelve articles on this theme.

Samir Dayal, Bentley University, USA

will present on:

Antigone at the Crossroads: The Ethics of Alienation

Abstract:

This talk will explore productive ambiguities in the category of alienation, which includes and exceeds the notion of loneliness. Whereas loneliness often indicates a feeling of painful separation of self from others, alienation may also operate as a principled and generative disaffection. Alienation may manifest as elective withdrawal from or disenchantment with the conventional, compulsory normativity regulating social relations and constituting dominant mores. Although it may also manifest as other states—such as indifference, an intermediate position—the main focus of this talk will be to discuss how alienation may afford the subject some freedom of thought and action. Through readings of Sophocles’ Antigone, as well as of works by Franz Kafka, Frantz Fanon, and other selected examples, I trace an ethics of alienation that highlights both the etymological sense of subjectivity (ethos), and the sense of principled disaffection from the status quo. Antigone is the figure of a subject at an ethical crossroads, who not only dissents from the reigning social order but also brings law as such into crisis. Antigone and the other examples I consider limn the intersection where crucial concerns of psychoanalysis and philosophy converge.

Samir Dayal is Professor of English and Media studies at Bentley University. His most recent books include New Cosmopolitanisms, Race, and Ethnicity, co-edited with Ewa Łuczak and Anna Pochmara, and the monograph Dream Machine: Realism and Fantasy in Hindi Cinema. He is the author of Resisting Modernity: Counternarratives of Nation and Modernity, coeditor of Global Babel: Interdisciplinarity, Transnationalism and the Discourses of Globalization, and editor, with an introduction, of Julia Kristeva’s Crisis of the European Subject, among other books. He has published widely on Postcolonial studies and cultural studies and is Editor-in-Chief of the PsyArt Journal. He is the President of the PsyArt Foundation for the Study of Psychology and the Arts.

Book of abstracts

International Society for Research on Solitude

Institute of Pedagogy – University of Szczecin Poland

Bishop Grosseteste University UK

Organizing Committee:

• Prof. Julian Stern (Bishop Grosseteste University)
• Dr. Malgorzata Wałejko (University of Szczecin)
• Dr Rafał Iwański (University of Szczecin)
• Dr Barbara Chojnacka (University of Szczecin)
• Dr Aleksander Cywiński (University of Szczecin)
• Dr Paula Wiażewicz-Wójtowicz (University of Szczecin)

The idea of the Alone Together symposium emerged from the meeting of Prof Julian Stern (UK) and Dr Malgorzata Walejko (Poland), both fascinated by the phenomenon of solitude.  Dr Walejko visited York St John University in 2018 thanks to the Erasmus+ programme, to meet and work with Prof Stern when he was based there.  Their common research resulted in publications with the participation of other solitude researchers (e.g. Solitude and Self-Realisation in Education in the Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2019; two special editions of Paedagogia Christiana: vol. 45 and 46; The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness), and also in the idea of meeting with other researchers from around the world interested in solitude, silence and loneliness. The meetings led to establishing the International Society for Research on Solitude.  

Dr. Rafał Iwański, ISRS Secretary  write.isrs@gmail.com

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